PURPOSE DAY
CPA firm offers a day of service
TROY, N.Y. » Employees with the Bonadio Group spent part of their day Thursday giving back to some of their clients throughout the Capital Region and beyond.
The company celebrated its first Purpose Day on Thursday with hundreds of employees from every office dedicating their time and talent to 12 nonprofits in Albany, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. Instead of reporting to their offices for the day, employees pitched in at more than two dozen sites across these communities.
The Bonadio Group is a nationally ranked Top 40 CPA firm offering accounting, business advisory, and personal financial services to clients of all sizes.
Purpose Day activities range from reading and art and crafts with children at Gateway Longview in Williamsville, to building a shed, mulching, and other outside clean-up and maintenance. At Catholic Charities in Albany, volunteers harvested a garden, then served a meal to guests.
One group of employees spent their day painting a couple of rooms inside the Rensselaer NYSARC on 102nd Street in Troy.
“We encourage employees to collaborate and give back year- round— Purpose Day harnesses the collective strength of our teams in a single day,” said Thomas Bonadio, CEO of The Bonadio Group. “Every office is represented on Purpose Day, working together across so many cities and worksites as we celebrate and share our talents with the communities where we operate.”
Staff members at the
Rensselaer NYSARC said that they were happy to see the firm give back to the community and that the volunteer work that they did was beneficial to their organization. The Rensselaer NYSARC supports roughly 700 people with developmental disabilities each year with the help of 450 staff members.
“It’s a nice partnership”, said Rensselaer NYSARC Associate Executive Director Jim Blessing. “They are giving back to our organization in ways that make it difficult for us to do during the course of our business, [ because while] supporting people there’s not a lot of time to do nice things like painting the rooms to make them more attractive for staff that are in training and they’re also paint- ing one of our kitchen areas, so it’s more comfortable for staff and people we support, so it’s a win- win.”
Employees with the Bonadio Group said that they enjoyed being able to work with their clients in a different perspective than usual.
“I think this is a nice way to kind of build upon the existing relationships we already have with our clients, but in a way that is outside of the normal course of business,” said Evan Kimber, an experienced assistant working on the healthcare tax exempt team with the Bonadio Group for the past two years. “We have a lot of clients, especially in the healthcare not-forprofit industry who just do so much to give back to the community and we wanted to get involved with that and kind of show our support and make sure that our clients know that we’re always going to be there for them, we’ll always be willing to work with them and sharing that community action and community activity program [with them].
“It’s all about continuing those relationships, but seeing it down a different path and not the normal course of business like working with them from an auditing and accounting perspective , but to kind of pitch in and maybe see things from their side and work with them with what they do during the day.”
After volunteering for several hours, the staff members from the Bonadio Group then got to enjoy a luncheon celebration, providing employees with the opportunity to share their experiences with co-workers. All volunteers from the accounting firm will also be treated to an extended